Jenny Erpenbeck

Jenny Erpenbeck

Biography

Jenny Erpenbeck is a German opera director and writer. Born in East Berlin in 1967, her work has been translated into 17 languages. Most recently, her novel The End of Days won the 2014 Hans Fallada Prize and the 2015 Independent Foreign Prize. Go, Went, Gone, the English translation of which Erpenbeck is presenting at the festival, won the Strega European Prize, the annual award given to a novel in Italian translation by a European author who has received national recognition in their home country.

Go, Went, Gone

Richard is a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns into compassion and an inner transformation as he visits their shelter, interviews them and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone, Erpenbeck’s masterful new novel, is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis. Jenny Erpenbeck’s appearance is made possible by the Goethe-Institut.